making a scrolling 2D platform game?

Im a school teacher developing a wildlife educational website for younger students. I would like to incorporate a series of simple 2D platform games but have no idea about cost or even where to start looking or even what im looking for. Games would involve an animal running across the screen jumping and ducking obstacles and collecting relevant items. About 10 stages, 1 minute each stage. objects and backgrounds would be repeating themselves so artwork would be minimum. At this stage I am looking to create one demo game or get an estimate on cost to develop. Any information or a point in the right direction would be great. Thanks, sorry about the total lack of technical knowledge.

I could imagine one studio would charge you thousands but an individual could do a good job and charge you a lot less, I reckon you could get a good hobbyist programmer to give you the best product for your money, theres a jobs section here, just do some other kinds of research and ask there :)

I would head on over to http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html and see if you can find someone there looking to do the project. In my opinion C++ is probably not the best for this type of project since it doesn't really support web-browser based games. Depending on how complex you want the game (From your description it doesn't seem to complex) you could probably get by with a simple flash based game. If it is a flash based game the cost would go down also.

Don't need to pay to make a game like this. Many hobbyists want to work on a project for free, to gain more practice and the experience of being on a team project, and building their portfolio. Like Zereo said, just head to gamedev.net and go fishing.